It's Eurovision Time!

Demonstrating that the US were perhaps being over optimistic in thinking it could befuddle Europe through Rihanna operation today sees the first semi-final in the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest. This is is large pop-music competition that European governments engage in every year. Obviously due to this wedding I will miss Saturday's (18/5/13) final meaning I will have to work harder during the semi-finals and my final verdict probably won't be ready until around Monday (20/5/13).

However the main theme of this years competition is Europe's transition from NATO western Europe and Soviet eastern Europe to a united Europe through the end of the cold war. This will be set against a backdrop of Eurozone austerity that has forced nations such as Portugal to pull out of this years contest. This theme has largely been set by the UK through their entry "Believe In Me" by Bonnie Tyler. Apart from being a very unsubtle plea for support for the UK from European nations Bonnie Tyler was very famous in the late-1980's for her overblown power ballads which were very popular at the time. With the Soviet "Iron Curtain" unable to stop FM and AM radio waves this type of music played a key role in helping attract those living under Communism to life in the west.

So much so it's long been acknowledged that one song in particular was purposefully beamed across Soviet Europe in order to set the cultural conditions for the fall of the Berlin wall although it never triggered an actual revolution.  However it has long been disputed exactly which song this was. The US and David Hasselhoff would like everyone to believe that it was the David Hasselhoff song "Looking For Freedom" everybody else though knows it was "Winds of Change" by West German/British band Scorpions/Skorpions depending on the English or German spelling of their name. This song is of course so awful it stands to this day as testament to just grim Communism really is.

Having played a central role in the Cold War and in particular the fall of the Berlin wall the now unified Germany has recently moved the discussion on with the trial of Beate Zschape the sole remaining member of the National Socialist Underground (NSU). For those of you who have not been following the NSU were a neo-Nazi terrorist group who carried out a series of bank robberies and murders of Turkish and Greek immigrants and German police officers whilst being monitored by Germany's domestic security service the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Apart from inflaming the long running tension over Turkish immigrants to Germany the NSU case highlighted how many European domestic security agencies such as Britain's MI5 have failed to move on from the Cold War.

During the Cold War NATO countries supported pro-western terrorist groups across the Soviet bloc while the USSR supported Marxist terrorist groups across western Europe most famously the Baader-Meinhoff gang/Red Army Faction in west Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy. The NATO nations countered this threat by building up facist terrorist groups such as the NSU to attack and counter-balance the Marxist terrorist groups whilst inflitrating the Marxist groups. The emergence of groups such as the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI) and the English Defence League (EDL) suggests that many in European security agencies would prefer to return to these Cold War tactics in response to the Eurozone crisis even though the USSR collapsed some twenty years ago. Turkey blaming last Saturday's (11/5/13) twin car bombings of Marxist groups linked to Syria was their way indicating to Germany that they are aware of this element of the Beate Zschape trial.

On a totally unrelated note Russia has today arrested a CIA agent accused of trying to recruit a Russian intelligence officer. Although I doubt  it says "CIA spy" on his visa application the arrested officer - Ryan Fogle - is one of the CIA officers attached to the Russian Embassy in what is an accepted practice in international espionage/diplomatic circles. Therefore ahead of a meeting between Russia and Israel this is Russia's way of saying that it thinks the US rather than Israel through Syria should be the ones getting punished for the US' Rihanna operation.


12:55 on 14/5/13.